Serena nods. “Despite the rumors, I have seen a doctor.”
“Well, as long as you don’t name your daughter Leia, then it’s alright with me,” Dylan jokes. Backfire. Serena’s eyes fill with a surge of rage. I’m waiting for fire to blow out of her mouth.
“You haven’t spoken to me in months and you walk in here and critique the name of my kid?”
“I was just jok—”
“Do you know the hellish torture that pregnancy is?” Serena cries. “Did you know that your feet and your ears and your nose grow? Did you know you get moles?”
“You look amazing,” Dylan tells her and places a hand on her arm. “You’re seriously glowing.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Serena replies. She lays her head back against the couch and groans.
I bite my lips together. Okay, no jokes and no compliments. Maybe Dylan should have researched how to handle hormonally unstable pregnant women before she entered into this conversation. Maybe the trick is no talking at all.
Dylan looks over at me with surprise, as if some alien being has entered her sister’s body and she doesn’t recognize her anymore.
Mike senses the problem.
“Here’s the trick to talking to a pregnant woman,” he offers and we all turn to look at him. “It’s a lot like talking to a sea animal. They don’t really understand what you’re saying, but they respond well to hand gestures and food. I carry powdered sugar donut holes with me at all times and toss them at Serena to reinforce positive behavior. It works really well.” He nods at the coffee table. “Cheetos would probably work, too.”
Serena tries to get up but she’s wedged to the couch. She points in our direction. “That is it. GET OUT!” she screams.
I willingly take the exit cue and follow Mike outside.
“Can I buy you a beer?” he asks me as the door closes behind us, and I nod.
“Definitely,” I say.
Dylan
I turn back to Serena. She has some rage to spill, and I’m going to stand here and take the assault. I’m the target and she’s throwing the darts. Here we go.
“What are you doing here, Dylan?” she asks. “Are you here to make me feel even fatter?”
“I’m worried about you,” I tell her truthfully.
“Why? You’ve never worried about me before.”
“That’s not true,” I tell her.
“You don’t know anything about me,” she says. “You left home years ago and hardly looked back. You barely talk to Mom and Dad. You hardly ever call. You come back and visit once or twice a year with your scrapbooks and your insane stories and we never know what to believe. You’ve missed out on a lot.”
Her face is hurt and angry and I wish I would have listened to Gray. I should have prepared myself for this.
I raise my arms. There’s only one thing to say. “Well, I’m here right now.”
Serena runs her hands over her stomach and sniffles. Her mouth starts to tremble. “You don’t know what this has been like. Do you know that my bladder is as flat as a pancake because it’s smashed under a bowling ball? Do you know that every time I sneeze, I pee myself?”
I shake my head. “I wasn’t aware.”
“All I can wear are pants with elastic waistbands. Do you know how degrading that is?”
I think about the image. “Actually, that sounds really comfortable.”
“Oh, you would say that.” She wipes a tear out of the corner of her eye. “What do you want, Dylan?”
“I want you to come home,” I say.
She laughs at my suggestion. “Home?” she says. “Where’s home? With Mom and Dad?” She shakes her head. “That’s not my home anymore. Home is with Mike. I belong with him, I can’t just leave him.”
“But—”
“What am I supposed to do?” she interrupts me. “Follow your example? Fall in love and then run away and make the guy suffer while I ‘figure myself out?’ Is that the way it works?”
I shake my head and step around the attack. I don’t want to fight with my sister. That’s not why I came here. I take a deep breath and sort out my thoughts, choosing my words carefully as if I’m gently poking a fire, trying not to make any sparks fly.
“You know I love you Serena, even if we haven’t been living in the same house the last few years. A lot of people leave after high school. Most people move away or go to college. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you guys. It doesn’t mean I don’t think about you and Mom and Dad all the time and carry you with me everywhere I go.”